Tag: vegetarian

A long while ago, one Christmas, I had a lengthy discussion with my younger brother, SherlockDov. It was prompted by his refusal to help washing up the dishes after a meal, because he’d become a vegetarian and didn’t want to touch anything that had been near meat. I’d got angry, because it seemed to be a fear of homeopathic contamination but in fact it was rooted in him not wanting to be complicit in the death of animals.

I couldn’t let it pass – that’s what family arguments are for – so I wrote up angrily that night a pseudo-Spinozan and Utilitarian point-by-point argument about how I could be a moral carnivore. It’s here, but I’ve edited substantially following criticisms in the comments. It’s taken me literally years to get around to finishing this.

Premiss: The most important thing in any life is to be free from pain.

Premiss: The next most important thing in any life is to have your desires satisfied.

Premiss: There is no life after death, for animals (including men), plants, rocks or anything else

Premiss: All things die.

Premiss: Animals’ desires are simple and satisfiable.

Premiss: If your death is forseeable, then that will cause anxiety – crudely, another form of pain.

Premiss: All things considered, animals desires in the wild are satisfied less and they suffer more pain than animals’ lives in humane – that is free range – farming and well-regulated abattoirs.

If we must die, a death which is free from pain and is unforeseen is the best death. And we must die. (From 1, 4 & 6.)

A life which involves the satisfaction of desires and ends as in 8 is called good. (From 1 & 2 & 3 & 5.)

The length of the life should not matter to the individual, as long as it fulfils all conditions of 9 (3 & 4.) A leap, this one.

If an animal is raised and dies in a humane condition, it is the best life. (From 9 & 10.)

For an animal, a life on a free-range farm ended sharply in a professional abattoir is the best life. (from 7 & 11)

I’m still pretty happy with the logic of these propositions. To me, they make a crude sense. If it fitted with the above propositions, was legal and well-cooked, I’d eat human flesh. (With humans, of course, there’s an element of choice – as fellow ‘rational’ organisms, they get a say in their lives and deaths.) I don’t think we’re qualitatively different from other animals, after all. My brother, I know, doesn’t believe me because he thinks I won’t ever have to defend this – by contrast, I think there’s a reasonable chance of human DNA-derived meat or faux meat being on the shelves at some point in my lifetime, and I’m happy to try it.

Point 7 worries me. I’m not sure abattoirs are sufficiently humane – the ones I’ve seen seem horribly primitive. But they are mostly fast enough, I think and hope, to not infringe 6. Worries about point 7 are enough to make me consider vegetarianism, now, years after the original discussion.

That said, I’m aware that point 10 is my biggest leap – and that from that point, the argument as a whole could be construed as justifying genocide. That’s worrying, but it has started me wondering whether our concern with racial preservation is itself suspect. If we killed every chicken on the planet, humanely, what’s the problem? I don’t think chickens particularly care about the preservation of genetic data, and if we don’t worry about killing one, why do we worry about killing all of them.